Andy Rubin: 500,000 Android Activations Daily

Half a million Android activations per day is impressive, however you look at it

According to Google’s Android boss Andy Rubin, half a million new Android devices are being activated daily. Not only that, the the numbers are growing by over four percent every week. Those numbers are frankly astonishing.

Back in January, Apple announced (in a roundabout way) over 360,000 daily iOS activations, and at that time Google was seeing 300,000 activations. It’s certain that Apple’s numbers have jumped significantly since then, especially considering the launches of both the Verizon iPhone and the iPad 2 in the meantime, but have they yet reached the 500,000 mark?

It’s impossible to know. Surely Rubin’s announcement via Twitter will set “analysts” a-shaking their magic 8-balls to help them pluck another made-up number from the air (possible answer: “Reply hazy, try again”), but until Apple makes an official announcement, we won’t know.

My own guess is that either Apple hasn’t reached 500,000 yet, or has already jumped so far past it that it is waiting to hit the magic million mark before saying anything. I’m no analyst, though, so what could I possibly know?

Also, Steve Jobs has in the past accused Google of juicing the Android activation numbers by including updates and reinstalls. Given that Rubin’s last Tweet before today’s announcement was 82 days ago, I don’t expect clarification soon, at least not via that channel.

However you slice it, though, those are big — and very impressive — numbers.